THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE Congressional investigation into the Dec. 7, 1941, disaster at Pearl Harbor moved through its second week amid bitter political wrangling and angry exchanges between...
...9The Japanese ambassadors, Nomura and Kurusu, ? sent a message to Tokyo the day before Pearl Harbor reporting that they had dined with President Roosevelt on Dec...
...25 bound for Hawaii, but with strict instructions to call off the attack and return home "if Japanese-American negotiations will reach an amicable settlement prior to the commencement of hostile action...
...My only interest is to have the facts developed, let the chips fall where they may...
...The first full week of testimony in the tense, jam-packed hearing room turned up a number of dramatic disclosures, including the now officially confirmed fact that the cracking of the Japanese secret code enabled American officials in Washington, including the late President Roosevelt, to keep informed for months before Pearl Harbor on the mood of the Japanese militarists...
...2) our Navy had announced that the Japanese home islands were completely blockaded...
...On Dec...
...Charles A. Lindbergh told the Associated Press last week that development of the atomic bomb had made "imperative" a world organization for control of destructive forces...
...Heatedly debated but still officially unresolved was the question of whether -the demands made on Japan Nov...
...Homer Ferguson, Michigan, another Republican member of the Committee, contended that "naturally they (the Democrats) are trying to get politics into this...
...Various naval vessels were directed to proceed blacked-out at night, to pursue a zigzag course, maintain radio silence, change scheduled routes, and provide armed convoys for merchant shipping—all before the Dec...
...The fleet was ordered to abandon its attack plans also if it were spotted by a single American, plane or ship...
...5. Disability insurance for protection against loss of wages because of sickness and disability...
...Strike...
...National Health Program President Truman sent a special message to Congress" this week calling for a five-point national health program whose principal feature would be a compulsory health insurance system for the prepayment of medical costs...
...2The task force left its secret rendezvous at Hito...
...Time-Table Of Attack Here are the principal revelations in the first phase of the Committee's investigation: 1The idea of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was ? conceived by Admiral Isoroku ("I'll dictate peace terms in the White House") Yamamoto in January, 1941...
...6Rep...
...Names And Notes In The News World Government...
...1, Tokyo flashed the fateful "Climb Mt...
...See Page 2...
...Colonialism...
...They knew, for instance, the disposition of the American fleet, its strength, its customs, its procedures...
...tion knew, through the decoding of hundreds of Japanese secret messages, that hostilities were imminent in the Pacific, it ordered the transfer of important units of the Pacific fleet to the Atlantic fleet even when the former was numerically inferior to the Japanese Navy in everything but battleships, 8While our highest officials were in touch with ? Japanese plans as a result of our success in breaking their code, the Japanese themselves profited from remarkably resourceful and effective intelligence work...
...27, 1941, by the then Secretary of State Cordell Hull constituted the ultimatum which plunged Japan into war...
...Atrocity...
...Robert E. Hannegan, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged that Republican activity was "a tactic of desperation by a party without a program...
...7, 1941, disaster at Pearl Harbor moved through its second week amid bitter political wrangling and angry exchanges between witnesses and Republican members of the Committee...
...Hutchins declared that now that the bomb has been dropped, "we must learn to live together in a world community...
...27, while the Japanese fleet was ploughing through the unpatrolled waters of the North Pacific toward Pearl Harbor...
...Yamamoto designed Dec...
...Gear-hart based his charge on evidence showing that it was not until Hull made his formal, written demand for Japanese evacuation of all the areas it had conquered and occupied that the Nipponese flashed the green light for the previously planned attack on Pearl Harbor...
...that the health of all its citizens deserves the help of all the nation...
...Brewster, for instance, accused Inglis of "unqualifiedly false" testimony in withholding accurate figures concerning the strength of the Atlantic Fleet in late 1941...
...4. A compulsory national health insurance system to assure prepayment of medical costs while retaining freedom of choice of doctors and hospitals...
...The command to strike came as the fleet was between 800 and 1,000 miles from Hawaii...
...Sen...
...This the Government has not denied...
...The warships moved on to within 200 miles and in the dawn hours of Dec...
...The compulsory health insurance program would cover medical, hospital, nursing, and laboratory services, and dental care, Mr...
...He proposed that the national system be greatly decentralized in its administration with local administrative units adapting local services to local needs and conditions...
...7Testimony disclosed that although the Administra...
...The attacking leaders were astonished at the enormity of the damage they inflicted...
...The only alternative to world government, he said, "is constant fear and eventual chaos...
...kappu Bay Nov...
...3Secretary of State Hull handed his ultimatum to ? the Japanese envoys Nov...
...One week later, on Nov...
...Alben Barkley, Kentucky Democrat and Committee chairman, angrily denounced Brewster, and Inglis declared that he resented "this impugning of my honesty and motives...
...20, Yamamoto ordered the special attacking force of two battleships, two heavy cruisers, six aircraft carriers, 16 destroyers, four light carriers, 20 first class submarines, and five midget subs, to assemble in Hitokappu Bay—in the southern Kuriles...
...Bertrand W. Gearhart, California, Republican, asserted that "there is no question that Hull precipitated war, although the Joint Chiefs of Staff had protested giving Japan an ultimatum...
...4, advised him against a Japanese-American war, and urged him to do the "introducing" at once between Japan and China...
...George D. Aiken, Vermont Republican, a fighting champion of the St...
...When the western railroads," he said, "are silenced against their better judgment, when the business voice of New England is made to change its tune within our own generation, when the southwest is told through the representatives of eastern railroads that the project will ruin Texas or Arizona or New Mexico, then it is plain that we are witnessing not only willful instigation of insidious sectionalism, but what is even more disturbing, we are witnessing a financial colonialism that will ultimately lead this country into an economic strait-jacket and commercial strangulation...
...7 as Y-Day on Nov...
...4Rear Admiral T. B. Inglis, chief of naval intelli...
...Said Rep...
...al attack with landings because they regarded the supply problems as too great...
...We should resolve now," the President told Congress, "that the health of this nation is a national concern...
...Hutchins gave four reasons why "the monster need never have been loosed: 1) President Truman has disclosed that Russia already had agreed to enter the war when the first bomb was dropped...
...gence who was the principal witness before the Committee during the first week, testified that Emperor Hirohito is reported to have known in advance "only the general outline" of the plan, and the Japanese peace envoys, Nomura and Kurusu, who were then discussing terms with Hull, nothing of the plan...
...that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed...
...The President's basic recommendations were: 1. Federal aid for construction of hospitals, health centers, and other facilities where needed...
...4) non-Government sources have disclosed that Japan seven months earlier had made peace offers substantially similar to her final one...
...Rexford G. Tugwell's recent assertion that he had to bring in U. S. experts to direct industrial and agricultural development because adequate professional talent was lacking among the Puerto Ricans...
...Roosevelt's papers relating to the Pearl Harbor attack on this question of responsibility, no one has anything to fear, least of all Hannegan...
...Conspiracy...
...If there is nothing in Mr...
...Lindbergh lauded the results of the recent conference on atomic energy in which Truman, Attlee, and King participated...
...Gearhart bolstered his assertion that U. S. ? officials knew that the Hull ultimatum was bound to provoke serious trouble by pointing to official testimony that American warships had orders to travel under virtual wartime conditions for nearly two weeks before Pearl Harbor...
...He denounced GOP attempts to search the files of the late President Roosevelt as a "political fishing expedition," and added: "I expect them, in their bitterness and their complete lack of program of their own, to carry on this desperate search for a political smudge-pot, a muck rake, and some way of making their accusations and in-nuendos stick where they are trying to plaster them—on our country's great and honored dead...
...5The Japanese made no plans to follow up the origin...
...More than 500 Puerto Rican professional men struck last week in protest against Gov...
...Estimated annual cost of the program would be $3,000,000,000, to be financed by payroll deductions, similar to the Social Security program...
...Truman said...
...Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, asserted last week that there was no need to drop the atomic bombs on Japan last Summer...
...Republican members of the Committee vehemently denied Hannegan's charges...
...2. Increased use of Federal funds to expand cooperative state-Federal public health, maternal, and child health services...
...The noted flier made it clear that "I have not changed my belief that World War II could have been avoided," but he added, "the issue between so-called interventionists and isolationists is past, except from an academic standpoint...
...A District of Columbia grand jury last week indicted 45 corporations, 34 individuals, and a trade association on charges of conspiring to fix unreasonable and non-competitive prices in the sale of artificial limbs for amputees, including war veterans...
...3) our airforce had announced that the towns of Japan were systematically being destroyed...
...However, Rep...
...Lawrence Waterway project, charged last week that eastern railroads and power companies, working closely with "the higher echelons of finance in New York," are throttling supporters of the waterway...
...Democratic members of the Committee took little part in the questioning of witnesses, but were quick to cry "politics" when GOP members complained of the barriers placed in the way of a full and frank investigation...
...However," they reported to Tokyo in a message intercepted by our own intelligence, "the President did not make known what he had in mind...
...Frank Keefe, Wisconsin, a member of the Committee: "Can it be that there are papers that might shed some light on this subject which Hannegan would like to see locked up and kept from the Committee...
...The violations of the anti-trust law caused great hardship to many of the 900,000 Americans who wear artificial limbs, Federal officials charged...
...We fought the war together and we face the future together as Americans—a future that is more fraught with danger than the war itself...
...Niitaka" message, which was the pre-arranged signal for the attack force to go through with its conditional orders...
...Hull has vehemently denied this, and Sen...
...Owen Brewster, Maine, a Republican member of the Committee, said at the end of a week of hearings that he was "not prepared to say" that "Hull pulled the trigger...
...Inglis testified that the Japanese estimate of the damage to U. S. warships was "highly conservative whereas their estimate of damage to U. S. aircraft was grossly exaggerated...
...3. Federal aid to support more adequate professional education and the advancement of research on the cause, prevention, and cure of cancer and mental illness...
...7 launched 351 planes to blast the American fleet riding at anchor...
...7 attack on Pearl Harbor...
...Bitterness Grows The hearings were marked by heated exchanges and recurring charges of politics...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 47
